


Biting Down

by reytheghost



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22115878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reytheghost/pseuds/reytheghost
Summary: Sirius visits Remus in the hospital wing after the full moon, decides to draw his friend, and maybe realises something.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 68





	Biting Down

The bright morning light fell through the large windows. In the quiet, Sirius' footsteps echoed when he walked through the hospital wing, towards the third bed on the left side.

It was the only one that was occupied and it was Remus’. Or, more specifically, it was Remus’ bed once a month, and never much longer than one day. Nevertheless it was always long enough for Sirius to grow restless and worried and to receive strange glances from James and hesitant questions from Peter. By now, James had joked, all of it was part of the moon cycle. At that Sirius had shoved him aside—accidentally into Peter’s chess game—but later, alone in the library, when the rather unflattering probably-just-rolled-out-of-bed-picture of an author with rectangular glasses and unruly grey hair on the first page of a book reminded him of James, he realised that it was not untrue.

Remus spent the full moons locked up outside on his own, and his friends spent them between the safe walls of the castle. They all spent the full moons in their own way: one of them as a werewolf, one of them attempting to distract himself—and seemingly succeeding—by playing stupid board games. One of them spent them losing those stupid board games, while he kept pointlessly, nervously glancing at the window, and one of them spent them biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood without really noticing it, too caught up in anger at everything and nothing in particular—frustration at the inevitable waxing of the moon, maybe, and a profound, unfamiliar sadness that clawed at his lungs.

The last one was Sirius.

By the time James and Peter drifted off to sleep, Sirius had been lying awake, thinking of Remus, scared and alone, again and again, until his head ached or until he fell asleep, eventually. Again and again.

Again and again. If growing up in a place where the magic hung so heavy in the air that he could almost taste it had taught him anything useful, it was that there was always  _ something _ you could do. He only had to find it.

Remus was lying on his back, motionless. His eyes were closed, Sirius noticed. As not to startle his friend, he sat down on the chair next to the bed instead of on the bed itself. When he shrugged his school bag off his shoulder, it landed on the floor with a dull sound. He cursed under his breath and stretched his leg to shove the books that had fallen out of it back into it with his foot.

“Hey, Sirius.”

Slightly startled, he looked up and impatiently pushed his black hair out of his eyes. Remus had turned his face towards him, his eyes tired and unfocused from the transformation, exhaustion and the pain he must be in—how much and how severe, Sirius could only guess. There was something else too—something that Sirius liked to think was elation, but, knowing Remus, it was probably surprise, as if everyone would have promptly forgotten about him during his absence. If he only knew.

"Morning," Sirius said, instead of telling him what had kept him up at night, sending him a somewhat sheepish half-grin. "Did I wake you up?"

"No." His voice was rough. He scratched his throat. "Don’t worry. I've been awake for some time already."

"How are you?"

He closed his eyes briefly—a moment Sirius took to inspect the unhealthily pale skin of Remus' face, the rest of his body. Although it was obscured by the thin white infirmary sheets, he still saw the cramped way Remus’ legs were splayed, how stiff his arms lay beside him. He looked as if he was prepared to be hurt again and it was so unfair.

"Does Madame Pomfrey know you're here?" Remus asked, seemingly more to the ceiling than to Sirius.

Not sure if he had just missed Sirius' previous question or didn't know what to say, Sirius answered, "She’s helping Gideon Prewett—he’s ill and lying on the couch in the common room.”

Remus hummed. "But you have Herbology now,” he said after a silence. “You shouldn't skip classes.”

"And leave you all alone?"

Remus turned his head again and managed to send him a stern look, even though he was lying down. It was something of an all-knowing stare that said, _You know it_. You know what I mean. You know what you're doing. No need to spell it out.

If Remus wasn’t going to, Sirius wasn’t either. The early morning light caught into his light brown hair, and in his eye lashes, and coloured his eyes a lighter shade of hazel. Sirius bore his own eyes into his as if it was a challenge. There was something about Remus that he couldn’t put his finger on. Somewhere over the past year, talking to Remus had become strangely easy and sometimes he caught words slipping off his tongue that were true and important in some way and that he would have never considered speaking out loud before. Or to anyone else, really. 

This time, Remus was the one to break the silence. "Sirius, I mean it,” he sighed, then tore his eyes away. 

For a brief moment, Sirius felt as if the ground had moved under him. He blinked, steadied his feet on the ground. "All those classes are a lot of bullshit I already know,” he said haughtily. It was obviously beside the point and blatantly untrue, but Remus gave a small smile that felt like a triumph. Like the early morning sunrays on his skin. Sirius couldn’t help but smile back at him.

"So. What are you going to do now?" Remus teased. "Something more productive than listening to Sprout?"

Sirius tilted his chin. "Yes. I'm going to draw you."

As soon as the words had left his mouth, he realised that it actually wasn't a bad idea. He reached for his bag, remembering his quickly sketched comic of Snape being attacked by a giant snake that had made Remus laugh during Charms until he'd turned red and professor Flitwick had interrupted his lecture to ask if something was wrong.

After he had pulled out a pencil and a piece of slightly creased paper pulled from his sketchbook, he looked at Remus again.

"Do you always carry those with you?" Remus asked.

"Yes."

"I never knew." He was really smiling now.

"So?" he asked, more defensively than he intended.

"Nothing,” Remus said with a straight face.

"So can I sketch you?"

The corners of Remus’ mouth pulled up again, a little. Then he turned his head once more, revealing the pink tip of one ear. "Like Snape?"

"Of course not."

"Okay then. If you really want to."

Sirius arched an eyebrow. "Yes, I really want to. Just don't move too much."

"Now that will be the hardest part," Remus said drily.

Sirius started sketching.

They talked a little. Their conversation faded slowly, and after a while, the only sounds came from Remus’ even breathing and Sirius’ pencil on the paper.

Although it wasn't something he did often at Hogwarts, he had had quite some practice, because surviving the lengthy days at Grimmauld Place was another story. There was something soothing about drawing, the lines that appeared by his hand, one by one and slowly, forming the features of his friend, from the shadows next to his nose to his slightly curly hair and the unexpected brightness of his eyes. Behind it was something heavier Sirius caught sight of every now and then when they met his wordlessly, but he wasn't good enough of an artist to convert that endlessness of his friend to a flat image on paper.

He didn't think anyone could be—no matter how long they took or what colours of paint they had. They could draw the uneven lines of his face that curved in strange places, and the shape of his eyes, and the shape of his mouth when he laughed, even, but how could they go beyond that? In the first place, they had to  _ see _ it—really see it...

In the beginning Remus had looked a bit tense, despite trading jokes with Sirius as if everything was fine, but now that he started to fall asleep, he looked almost peaceful. On his right cheek was an angry scratch. It was new. Sirius sketched it too. He tried to be as honest as possible, almost losing track of time.

While sketching, he had planned on giving Remus the end result—maybe to let him know, in some warped way, that he was just a boy—a Gryffindor, a Marauder, a regular, very annoying thirteen-year-old with even more annoying friends. Just a boy, whose feet grew faster than his legs and who drooled in his sleep—and not whatever monstrosity it was that Remus thought of, that scientists wrote about in their long-winded textbooks. This was what he was, this was how Sirius saw him and that was that. Period.

But now that he had finished the rough sketch, the idea of giving it to Remus made his stomach squirm. It was a stupid idea, surely. Seeing a stupid drawing wasn’t going to change Remus’ mind. If anything, it would come across as an egocentric asshole move from Sirius. And even if Remus didn’t guess that as a reason why, it would be a stupid gift that would make him wonder,  _ Why, Sirius? Do I remind you of the aristocracy who hang their own portraits on the wall? _ and with a sour taste in his mouth, Sirius would say, “Do you think they’d ever have themselves painted on their sickbed?”

Or was that James’ voice? It might make a soppy gift, but it was for Remus—Remus wouldn’t mind; he would at least appreciate the gesture, wouldn't he? 

_ Remus’ smile, almost shyly. “Okay then. If you really want to.”  _

Unsure, Sirius stared at the pencil lines and traced his finger tips over it.  _ Remus Lupin, his very good friend. _ He got up and compared the sketched version to Remus' face—briefly, because staring at people when they were asleep was creepy. Remus had more or less given him permission to stare at him, only now that the sketch was finished for now, it felt like trespassing, 

The sketch was alright, he supposed. It looked alright, and it did feel honest—yet somehow, that didn't stop the squirming of his stomach or the sweating of his palms.

He hesitated for another few seconds, while the sun burned uncomfortably on his skin. The white of the infirmary, the bright light—it created a room of possibilities, like an enormous theatre, like a magnified reality, and suddenly he wished they were in the dormitory, in one of their beds with the curtains drawn in the darkness, like two nights ago. Then he reached out, and pulled the sheets over Remus' shoulders, carefully, and tucked him in and left quietly, Gryffindor-pride and all, the sketch inside his bag.

  
  



End file.
